Comments on Pro Libertate: Torture and the "Goodness of America"

anonymous, can you be specific? What in particula...

2007-01-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

anonymous, can you be specific? What in particular about my piece 'Born Again Christianity's Jihad On America' fit your criteria?

an eye for an eye!!!!

2007-01-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

an eye for an eye!!!!

hello all,i think our friend drs is right. 1200ps...

2007-01-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

hello all,

i think our friend drs is right. 1200psi may be a bit ludicrous.

http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?cat=Compressors+%26+Air+Tools&pid=00916561000&vertical=TOOL&subcat=Air+Compressors+%26+Inflators&BV_SessionID=@@@@0394848361.1168141025@@@@&BV_EngineID=cclfaddjkllkmidcefecemldffidfjm.0

that is a link to a $600 sears large capacity air compressor. max psi? 175. max delivery? 90 psi. good job drs. :-)

I suppose the most significant part of this story ...

2007-01-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

I suppose the most significant part of this story is not "Mitch's" credibility (which I find suspicious for technical reasons given below), but Glenn Beck's reaction -- along with the rest of those self-described "great Americans".

I especially appreciate the quote from JBS founder Robert Welch about torture and the communists. Up until recently, most Christians associated torture with the bad guys, based on hearing the victims of communist torture like Richard Wurmbrand or Harlan Popov speak in their churches. (As I young boy I remember being afraid to shake Popov's hand because of what he had went through. )But now days....

As for Mitch's credibility: First, it takes very little pressure differential to rupture an eardrum. If one used 1400psi water as Mitch claims, I strongly suspect you would permanently destroy the middle ear and much more. It would be pretty hard to extract much information from the guy after that.

"Mitch" also claims to use 1200psi air. This likewise seems incredible and unnecessary. I am not aware of any air hoses or pneumatic devices built to withstand that type of pneumatic pressure -- at least for the typical industrial stuff that I'm familiar with. Also, as I learned in my Fluid Dynamics class eons ago, for a nozzle of a given size, once the upstream pressure exceeds 1/0.53 times the downstream pressure (for air), the fluid is now sonic and you can't push any more fluid through the nozzle no matter how much more the upstream pressure is increased. (Unless the nozzle is specially designed for supersonic flow.) Thus to use 1200psi air seems pointless given that you are discharging into atmospheric pressure.

David Stertz

deadissue makes precisely the "herd" guilt-by-asso...

2007-01-06T03:09:00.000-07:00

deadissue makes precisely the "herd" guilt-by-association and naked assertions I was warning about in my above post with his archived blog posting, Born Again Christianity’s Jihad on America, he provided above.

These small North Carolina communities, the writer...

2007-01-06T02:57:00.000-07:00

These small North Carolina communities, the writers of Torture Taxi observe, are burdened “with this open secret that nobody wants to talk about. It shows what's going on culturally. When a country starts doing things like torturing and disappearing people, it's not just a policy question, it's also a cultural question.”

This is exactly right: We are contemplating a sickness that transcends mere politics, and it can't be cured simply through political means.

Yes, of course, as I've been sayin' all along in these threads, Mr. Grigg. "It's the culture, stupid!" Although, this sharp "eagle eye" focus these authors apparently have shed upon a couple of North Carolina rural communities doesn't indicate or imply any extraordinary cultural depravity dislayed within or from those communities contrasted to the rest of America, as he seems to imply, albeit from your quotes, as I haven't read the book.

Instead, what it signifies in my mind is how far down the cultural sewer ALL of America has twirled. After all, by the time rural America has plunged off the moral cliff into the abyss of amorality and immorality, the rest of America had already long ago preceded it.

There's another reality that I suppose these two authors may be overlooking, as many folk do. The group is not the individual. Populations are distinct from individuals. Naked herd classifications or assertions annoy me to no end. We're all guilty of it to some extent, but when folk spout these assertions to the larger nationwide public, via books, newspapers, movies, etc., it becomes problematic.

Besides, there are just as many, if not more, "God, guns and guts" inherent within folk who hail from out in the least populated expanses of the West than exist in the Deep South. There exists far-flung concentrations of statist Mormons and Lutherans in states like North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. Ergo, don't be surprised if at some point you discover the existence of a clandestine airstrip situated out in the Black Hills, Rockies, Clearwater Mountains, or the desert.

Anyhow, a parallel to this would be when the argument is often made (by media marionettes and law enforcement) that a convenience store "armed" with video cameras are far less likely to be robbed or its cashiers murdered.

Yawn... If I was a cashier at a given convenience store, the fact that vid cams are present merely means to me personally that the chances of the thug being eventually apprehended is very high. I still could see myself being a corpse in the aftermath, to hell with statistics.

IOW, my store could be one of the "less likely" statistical odds and that's why being armed myself trumps whatever the statistics would tend to indicate.

The same kind of argument is made about "young, single, males" being the most accident-prone drivers and therefore ALL of the males fitting that demographic statistic suffer high insurance rates. It may make sense to a business, but to the individual who doesn't fit that profile it's totally meaningless. BUT, such is life...sigh.

Nothing of any consequence can be done to rectify the political problems that have led to the creation of an American Torture State until the underlying cultural and moral problems are dealt with.

This will require something robustly unpopular in every age, an activity for which nobody has any appetite at all: Repentance.

Yeah, like we can expect folk to repent of abstract acts like torture, perpetrated by the Regime's minions and not the ordinary commoner on the street, when we won't repent of what seems insignificant to the manifold self-righteous in this country. Things such as thoughts and acts of fornication, adultery, theft (taking another's wealth via government - welfare, subsidies, assistance, etc. Or doing it yourself - taking office supplies from work w/o permission, etc.), gossip, drunkenness, lying, murder via abortion, ad infinitum. I'm afraid we've been complacent for far too long about such things and now they're considered "normal" and God simply overlooks those things. Pure nonsense.

Why should torture be that distasteful to a populace like that? In fact, instead of looking upon torture as some new absolute low we've devolved into, it should instead be looked upon as the near end-result of a decades-long rotting culture. The end-result, of course, will be outright complacency about murder, not just of those in the dawn of life, or the twilight of life, but of those in any stratum of life (except young chil'un since they can still be mind-molded) who don't conform to the majority/State mandated viewpoint on any critical matter.

Kudos on the Marathon Man photo! Nice work, I enj...

2007-01-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

Kudos on the Marathon Man photo! Nice work, I enjoyed it.

Off topic, but I read your information on the top right of the page and thought you might be interested in reading this:

http://deadissue.com/archives/2005/06/13/born-again-christianitys-jihad-on-america/

Keep up the good work!

Broken, you are right that we deserve to lose. Go...

2007-01-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Broken, you are right that we deserve to lose. God help us. The Hand of Judgement has been upon us for a long time. Heavy taxation is judgement. A mind to kill our heritage-abortion-is judgement. Sodomy in the public square is judgement. Islam has been used to judge the Church/Christendom in the past, and it is happening again. Pray for Reformation; it is our only hope.

You nailed it with: Nothing of any consequence can...

2007-01-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

You nailed it with: Nothing of any consequence can be done to rectify the political problems that have led to the creation of an American Torture State until the underlying cultural and moral problems are dealt with.

The "underlying cultural and moral problems" are in fact the source of much that plagues our country. We can see it all around us, and read about it everyday.

The slippery slope has been greased by the reports from what occurs at Gitmo. All too many occupants of this nation will be immunized to the idea of torture. Now it's old news; "So what? We did it at Gitmo" will be the mantra we hear when future horrible crimes are exposed.

I decided long ago: If it is only by such measures...

2007-01-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

I decided long ago: If it is only by such measures we can hope to win, then we surely deserve to lose. The Hand of Judgment is surely coming upon us, soon.